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“You sound different,” she said.

“I am,” I answered, letting out a humorless chuckle.

That seemed to settle it for her.

“Okay.”

I sat there gripping the phone, waiting, my whole body strung tight with the terrifying possibility that everything I’d believed for years might have been built on a story I’d never actually verified. The only way to find out the truth now meant chasing it myself, outside any agency or agenda.

Whatever came next, I understood with sudden clarity that it would have nothing to do with proving Nikolai guilty and everything to do with finally learning what had actually happened to my brother.

Chapter Twelve

Nikolai

The meeting room beneath this particular Golovin casino had no windows, no clocks—nothing to remind anyone how long they’d been arguing except the growing pile of coffee cups at the center of the table. Mikhail sat at the head of it the way he always did. He was still and patient, letting things run their course before he stepped in to redirect as he deemed fit, as the absolute leader of the Golovin Bratva. Viktor hadn’t stopped pacing since we’d sat down, his sleeves rolled to the elbow like the meeting was something he intended to physically wrestle into submission.

“We should have handled this the day the first article ran,” Viktor said, for what felt like the fourth time in an hour. “Instead we waited, and now federal agencies are crawling through our books.”

“And what exactly would you have handled?” Alexei asked, not looking up from his phone. “A ghost with no name and no face. You can’t retaliate against a byline.”

“We could have found her faster.”

“We found her fine.” I kept my voice level. “The damage is already done. What matters now is containment.”

Mikhail’s eyes moved to me and stayed for a few seconds. I understood right then that he’d caught something in my tone I hadn’t meant to give away. I also knew his silence would break later when the room had emptied.

Sebastian hadn’t said a word since the meeting started, working through a stack of casino reports, immune to whatever noise filled the room around him. He hadn’t touched his coffee. He rarely did, from what I’d noticed over the years—Sebastian ran on precision rather than habit, and coffee, like most things other men used to steady themselves, apparently wasn’t necessary for him. When Mikhail finally turned to him directly, Sebastian looked up like he’d been waiting to be asked the whole time.

“Three of the exposed accounts are dead weight now,” he said. “Federal auditors will trail them regardless of how clean we make them look going forward. I’d let those go entirely—write them off, stop defending ground we’ve already lost, route new volume through the entertainment properties instead. Concert bookings, ticket resale, merchandising. Slower, but it survives scrutiny longer than anything gaming-adjacent will for the next eighteen months.”

No one argued with him. Sebastian’s silence carried more weight in this family than anyone’s volume ever had, precisely because he never spoke unless the situation demanded it. I’d watched him dismantle men twice his age with a single line of figures they hadn’t bothered to check closely enough, and I respected that quality of his just as much as I understood Mikhail’s quietness and Alexei’s precision.

“Do it,” Mikhail said. “Quietly. I don’t want another headline before this one finishes dying down.”

Then the conversation shifted toward the person responsible for all of it.

“She needs to disappear,” Viktor said, his tone flat. “Permanently. Word gets out that a waitress took down half our laundering infrastructure and walked away clean, every ambitious rat in this city starts thinking they can do the same.”

“Agreed,” Alexei said, finally setting his phone down. “Makes us look weak otherwise.”

Something in my chest went cold and violent at the casual way they discussed her as if she was disposable, as if she was a line item to be closed out rather than a person. I had spent days telling myself I hated her as much as she deserved to be hated. But, sitting in that room listening to Viktor plan her death like a routine cleanup job, I discovered the hatred wasn’t nearly as uncomplicated as I’d told myself it was.

“I’ll handle her,” I said.

The room went quiet in a different way than it had all evening.

“You’ll handle her,” Viktor repeated, something almost amused in it. He leaned back in his chair, studying me.

“Personally,” I said, meeting his eyes without blinking. “This is my mess. I’ll clean it up my way.”

Mikhail studied me for a long moment, and whatever he saw in my face made him nod once instead of pushing it further. “Fine,” he said. “But it gets handled, Nikolai. Soon.”

I didn’t answer that directly. I redirected the room because staying on the subject of Camila any longer risked revealing more than I could afford.

“There’s a larger problem developing,” I said. “Sylvester Graham.”

Mikhail’s jaw tightened at the name; even Viktor stopped pacing long enough to actually listen.